Workmen's advocate., 1887-01-08


 433 establishments reported a salary list of trtle over 2,OO0 persons. Aside from salary receivers little more than three-sevenths by the day opp. II, l5l The proportion of pieCe-work is greatest among women, nearly two-thirds of whom are paid in this manner opp. IS, l9L
 The prevalence of piece-work has little or nothing to do with the question of weekly or monthly payment, In fact, weekly payments are a tritle more ire quent with piece hands, or establish ments having majority of piece-hands, than with day-hands or establishments where day hands constitute the majority (p. lGO.
 Of the concerns that now pay monthly, about One-quarter say that they do so because there Is no demand for a change. Nearly one-third consider weekly pay ment quite impractcable. The remain der base their opposition to the change to an almost equal extent on the added expense of paying weekly and the belief that il would be bad for the hands Opp. 4, 45).
 Of eighty-tive concerns that have re- gently made q change in the time of pay mcnt, thirty report decidedly good effect; eight decidedly bad effect; and thirty eight little or no effect,
 CREDIT AND PRICES.
 Of the concerns reporting, over One- third own their employees tenements to a considerable extent; about half own no tenements at all the remainder own simply the houses of one or two persons in special positions requiring nearness to the mill (p. 42). Little more than one tenth of the companies own boarding houses, and a still smaller proportion own stores Opp. 42, 43.
 Returns from about half the mills in tlic cttlt SHOW d tbtu OI ], So CdScS ol factorizing of wages in the year 1885. This would indicate, roughly, total of 4,O0O cases among factory hands, and perhaps 5000 cases among wage-workers of all kinds.
 Cases of assignment of wages are prob 1 ably more than twice as frequent as cases of factorizing.
 Factorizing is not avoided by weekly payment of wages; the proportion of cases reported is as high among weekly payment mills as elsewhere. Weekly payment does not, ill itself, prevent this. It simply gives chance to pay cash if the operative is so inclined, and makes the collection of debts trifle more diff cult. The weekly payment districts con. tain the most cash stores with no bad debts at all; they also contain the credit stores reporting the largest percentage of bad debts opp, 64, G5).
 This percentage is nowhere very large It increases quite steadily with the in crease of credit business, but rarely rises as high as three per cent.
 The difference between the prices of cash and credit stores is very much greater than this It is hard to make an estimate of the exact amount. The fig ures on page 66 warrant us i'll saying that the difference in price between stores similarly situated, doing three-quarters cash business, respectively, will average six per cent. Opp. 66-10).
 This figure may fairly be taken as rep resenting the cost of the credit system in retail trade.
 Such results are of course based upon comparison of prices in the same cities or villages and the same ciass of trade; between different places, no such com parison is possible, Prices of groceries and provisions which constitute the Dt0jH item in the workingmen's expense are lowest in our reports from New London; they are also low in New Haven and Bridgeport, while in other large towns and cities they average much higher than in the villages. We thus have three distinct groups: Cities with a considerable shipping trade, where prices are low; other cities and towns, where prices are high; and finally, country towns and villages, where the prices of provisions are lower than in the second class, though, as rule, not quite so low as in the first pp. 6S, 69). The difference